Friday, April 14, 2006

Google Video + Google Maps = Virtual Video Tourism!

Keir Clarke has taken the Google Maps API and built a map that plots significant tourist locations around the world. Simply called Virtual Tourism, places like The Forbidden City in China and The Great Barrier Reef in Australia are all plotted on a Google Map for you to explore. The cool part about the map is that when you click the pins, a handpicked video from Google Video for that location is presented in the bubble for you to enjoy! GChart.com also has a Video map that pulls in video from any location you select on the map through the YouTube.com service but Virtual Tourism is a bit more targetted for specific locations.While on the topic of virtual tourism, I should also pass along this Map of "Sacred Destinations" that Holly Hayes passed on to me. She is the webmaster for the Sacred- Destinations (.com) and has integrated the Google Maps API into her site to display all the locations which are indexed. It's a pretty interesting way to "virtually" explore sacred religious and holy places from around the world.

These are just a few more examples of how Google Maps mashups are being used for the purposes of tourism. Check out my collection of Travel & Tourism and City Informationmashups for more!